US stocks dip as markets monitor trade war fallout

Wall Street stocks finished lower Tuesday following news of solid bankearnings as investors monitor developments in the US-China trade war after last week market gyrations.

"It's quiet," said Adam Sarhan of 50 Park Investments. "Right now, you have a situation of digestion or the market consolidating a lot of volatility over the last few weeks."

The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished 0.4 percent lower at 40,368.96.

The broad-based S&P 500 declined 0.2 percent to 5,396.63 while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index slipped 0.1 percent to 16,823.17.

A White House spokeswoman described the ball as being "in China's court" in the trade war between Washington and Beijing.

Investors welcomed a calmer US Treasury market after last week's spike in US Treasury bond yields. But there is still a lot of uncertainty among market participants.

"Will we have relief or progress with the trade tariff situation or is the situation going to get worse?" Sarhan said. "We don't know. That question mark is leading investors to hold off from taking any big positions."

Among individual companies, Boeing dropped 2.4 percent after a Bloomberg report that Beijing ordered Chinese airlines not to accept planes from the US aviation giant amid the US-China trade war. Boeing declined to comment.

Bank of America rose 3.6 percent, while Citigroup gained 1.8 percent as large lenders concluded a solid round of first-quarter earnings results.

Netflix surged 4.8 percent following a Wall Street Journal report that said the streaming company is targeting a doubling of revenue by 2030.

(AFP)